Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Torture is a state policy in Egypt, human rights group says

An Egyptian anti-torture group said Monday that the Egyptian government is officially sanctioning the use of torture, adding that state violence is escalating, Reuters reported Monday.

“Torture in Egypt is a state policy, a systematic and organized policy,” the Nadim Centre anti-torture group said in a statement marking the release of a report on torture in Egypt covering a four-year span between 2003 and 2006.

According to the article: “Nadim said it believed torture was a sanctioned government policy because of identical methods of abuse it said were used in various prisons and police stations, including electric shocks and suspension by the hands and wrists.

Nadim also said the authorities typically buried people who died from injuries inflicted while in custody under heavy police guard, suggesting a deliberate policy of covering up torture.”

Later, the article added that: “The report also showed that Egyptian law only recognized mistreatment as torture if it is carried out on criminal suspects to extract a confession.”

According to the report: “But torture that is perpetrated to punish or as a favor to a third party or which is perpetrated for no reason save to spread fear and impose police control is no more than ill treatment, and is treated as a misdemeanor, and the penalty for it does not exceed three years of imprisonment.”